13 thoughts on “The best 9:53 of my day so far.”

Thank you for sharing this at DC! SO great to see Portland’s Sue Butler (#24) toughing it out with the rest of them.

Observations that come to mind, indicating what a rookie I am:

1. I watch a lot of women get off and run through sections that I know I not only ride through, but that I would WANT to ride through. It’s what I have come to call “BMX brain”, that little voice in my head that says, “I KNOW I can clean this!”, no matter the cost in overall time or placement. Either I must learn to embrace running, or I must go back to short-track and stay there. (..::grin::..)

2. What IS it about my thing for fat tires that makes me look at these bikes and shudder? Put me on a real cross bike and probably I would get off and run more… These women have SKILLS.

3. The crowd all look like they’re in a combination of petit-mal seizure and semi-consciousness; the cheer when the favorite goes by and the rest of the time they stand quietly and sip their beers. SO different from cx crowds here in the US, where we cheer for everyone on the course, including the stray dog that got past the tape. (I’m sure the Belgians think we’re nuts too, so it’s only fair.)

4. I know a useless-tiny bit of German and just enough French to get myself in trouble; and I can tell you that Flemish sounds nothing like either one. It sounds more like Dutch or Danish where every third word is run through a mixer, making the overall effect mostly unintelligible and trippy.

@beth, there is a second video on that link if you want to see zolder wc. that video has much much worse conditions. frozen packed down ice and mud, no way to even dig your foot in to run up the hills. no fun. i bow down to these fucking women, lemme tell ya.

…katie compton simply has to win worlds this year…she can kick everyone’s ass in ‘world cup’ races all season but she won’t get the recognition from the old school euros until she dons the ‘maillot arc en ciel’…

…she IS the best & she fucking deserves to sport those colors proudly…

…i caught a glimpse of ex-pat christine vardaros who’s lived in belgium for years but was a local here in marin…although past her prime & not figuring in the results these days, she’s still racing & bangin’ it in those fields…

…‘phlegm-ish’, beth…the language that starts in the lungs & comes up through the throat…& ya, dutch is the basis…

…“Eddy Merckx has said that he is not convinced by Alberto Contador’s defence against his adverse analytical finding for Clenbuterol at the 2010 Tour de France…

Contador is currently waiting for a verdict in the case and has claimed that the traces of Clenbuterol discovered in his urine were caused by contaminated meat that he consumed during the race.

‘I’m not passing any judgements on the man or on the consequences’, Merckx told Le Soir. ‘Frankly I don’t know what is going to happen but the explanations given by Contador seem lightweight and not very credible to me.’ “…

…there ya go, ‘berto…fast eddy has thus spoke…now go do your time…good on the bike but not so good in the lab…pay up, sucker…